Former Siena Heights Coach Kohn Excited for Next Phase as Lenawee Christian AD
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
June 3, 2026
When Matt Kohn found out that Siena Heights University was closing its doors at the end of the 2025-26 school year, he was on vacation at a southern Indiana campground with his family.
He got out of the water, answered a call from one of the Siena Heights assistant coaches and was given the shocking news. Within minutes, he dried off and was packed and in his car, making the four-hour drive back to Adrian to meet with his coaching staff and players.
“I did it for my coaches,” Kohn said. “It was important for us to be on the same page and get together a game plan.”
Kohn, 44, is putting together a new game plan these days. The Adrian native began his new job this week as the athletic director at Adrian Lenawee Christian schools.
It’s a significant change from being head coach of the NAIA Saints, a position he held for the past decade. At Siena Heights, his football team typically had 120-130 players. Lenawee Christian, a Class D-size school, will have an enrollment of 114 this fall.
“It’s all relative,” Kohn said.
Instead of overseeing a team with 14 assistant coaches, he will lead an athletic program that has had incredible success over the years. Over the past decade, the Cougars have won two Division 4 girls basketball championships and three 8-Player football title. LCS won two Girls Volleyball Finals in the early 2000s, and the boys basketball program has 11 Regional titles and a Finals appearance since 1998.
The school takes tremendous pride in its athletic program and Kohn, who lives just minutes from campus, is excited to be a part of the LCS family.
“This is a great opportunity for myself and my family, and truly is done by God,” Kohn said. “Being able to stay home and continue into the next phase of my professional career is really all I could have asked for.”
Kohn finished out the school year at Siena Heights, helping find new schools for his remaining football players and new homes for his coaching staff.
“They made a commitment to me by coming to Siena Heights,” he said. “I felt it was important that I remained committed to them.”
As the end of the school year became closer and closer, however, he started searching for his next career move. He didn’t want to move out of the Adrian area but also knew he needed to find a job. When previous LCS athletic director Craig Anderson was promoted to principal, Kohn applied for the administrator position.
“I have so many connections to LCS,” he said. “I couldn’t be more excited.”
While growing up in Adrian, his dad, Bill Kohn, was a head football coach at multiple schools in Lenawee County, including Morenci, Adrian – and Lenawee Christian.
On its campus on the west side of Adrian off US-223, LCS has what it calls The Centre, which offers fitness and training facilities, youth and adult sports leagues, an indoor pool and outdoor water recreation area. The Centre opened in 1988. Kohn said his parents would drop him off at The Centre when he was a kid to play sports. It’s where he developed his love for athletes.
Eventually he became a record-setting quarterback at Adrian High School and played in the Michigan High School Coaches Association East-West All-Star game. He went on to play quarterback at the University of Indianapolis and spent time with the Ohio Valley Greyhounds of the United Indoor Football Association and two seasons in the Arena Football League with the Nashville Kats and Kansas City Brigade.
He returned to the University of Indianapolis to coach for three seasons before returning to Adrian to join the fledgling Siena Heights football program. In 2016 he was named the interim head coach and took over the job full-time in 2017. Over 10 seasons overall, the Saints won 50 games and had just one sub-.500 finish. They were often ranked nationally and nearly made the NAIA playoffs a couple of times.
“I can honestly say I showed up to work every single day for 15 years, and I gave it everything I had,” Kohn said of being a college head football coach. “There's not a drop of me left that I did not spend in investing in my coaches and investing in my players and getting our guys ready for games and training them and recruiting. That program got every last drop of Matt Kohn. So, I don't have any regrets in that regard.”
Kohn is part of a bit of a transition at Lenawee Christian. The Cougars named a new varsity football coach this week, and with Anderson becoming principal, the school has also hired Noah Beaudrie, an Erie Mason graduate and former quarterback at Adrian College, as the assistant athletic director. Beaudrie comes from a family of athletes. His father is the football head coach at Monroe Jefferson, which had its best season in years last fall, and his sister won a Finals championship in track & field last weekend.
“I’m blessed to have someone like Noah by my side,” Kohn said.
Kohn said in his new role, he will bring his passion for developing student-athletes to the high school level.
“I'm coming into an incredible situation with incredibly strong team members,” he said. “That definitely motivates me every morning, to come to work and just get a little better every day because of the team I have around me.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a news and sports reporter at the Adrian Daily Telegram and the Monroe News for 30 years, including 10 years as city editor in Monroe. He's written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. He is now publisher and editor of The Blissfield Advance, a weekly newspaper. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS (Top) New Adrian Lenawee Christian athletic director Matt Kohn, left, and assistant Noah Beaudrie post for a photo in front of the school’s stadium gate. (Middle) Kohn huddles with his Siena Heights football team. (Top photo courtesy of Lenawee Christian Schools. Middle photo courtesy of the Siena Heights athletic program.)
Bentz Adds Next Chapter to Inspirational Story as Novi Christian Athletic Director
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
September 24, 2024
NOVI – For anyone seeking an inspirational speaker, new Novi Christian athletic director Chad Bentz has a story he’d like to tell.
His includes the value of resilience, proof that improbable dreams can come true, and affirmation that mentors can change lives.
Bentz spent time in Major League Baseball, playing 36 games for the Montreal Expos in 2004 and four games in 2005 for the Miami Marlins as a left-handed relief pitcher.
The chances of making it to the big leagues are slim to begin with, but were even longer considering that Bentz grew up in Alaska.
On top of that, Bentz has a deformed right hand. When he debuted with the Expos, he followed in the footsteps of Jim Abbott, who also has a deformed right hand and starred at Flint Central and University of Michigan on the way to pitching for four MLB teams across 10 seasons.
Bentz was certainly a case of beating improbable odds, and watching Abbott while growing up was a big reason why.
“Everybody has their favorite players, but Jim was more than that to me,” Bentz said. “He gave me confidence to try things. I was always the kid with the weird hand. I always kept my hand in my pocket and was always self-conscious about it. Then I saw Jim pitching. He gave me confidence to try things, and thank goodness he did. When I tried things, I discovered I was good at it and got more confidence.”
It got even better for Bentz as a college freshman playing for Long Beach State, when he got to meet Abbott in during an unexpected visit.
“Meeting him was by far the most star-struck I’ve ever been,” he said. “We both stuck out our left hands to shake and it was the first time ever where it wasn’t that awkward. It was everything I thought it was going to be. He was incredibly nice, funny and just a good dude. That was one of my favorite moments. Kids being born, wedding and Jim.”
A big part of Bentz’ baseball development occurred in Michigan. Although he grew up in Alaska — he said he could’ve been a “Hall of Famer pitching inside of a gym” — Bentz would spend his summers in Michigan with family members in the Grand Rapids area.
He ended up hooking up with a travel ball team in the area, the Grand Rapids A’s, which was a step up from competition he saw in Alaska.
“I went down to Michigan, and I said, ‘OK, there are a lot of players in this country, and I am not as good as I thought I was,’” he said. “After my freshman year here (playing summer ball), I went back (to Alaska), and I started lifting and I didn’t stop. I kept working.”
Bentz eventually was drafted out of high school in the 34th round by the New York Yankees, played at Long Beach State and then was drafted in the seventh round by the Expos in 2001. In choosing baseball, he turned down opportunities to play football at Division I schools in what was then the PAC-10.
Bentz had been a standout linebacker and fullback, and when his baseball career was done, he began a college football career at age 30 playing for Castleton State College in Vermont.
“Playing college football at age 30 kind of gave me a taste of it, and that taste was that you should have done this 10 years ago,” Bentz quipped. “Not at 30. I was in slings every single Sunday. I couldn’t move. My arms were in slings. Both of them. But it was worth it. I loved and was thankful I had that opportunity. It filled that ‘what if’ type of thing.”
A husband and father of three, including 2-year-old twin boys, Bentz jumped on the chance to become the athletic director at Novi Christian and move to Michigan to not only be closer to family but give his kids a chance to be more active.
“Alaska is great, but it’s limiting,” Bentz said. “I told people that the grass isn’t going to be greener, but it’s just going to be a bigger yard and more swings for them to play on. We just wanted a little bit more opportunity.”
Bentz also said he would love the opportunity to speak in front of groups of people and share his journey in hopes of inspiring others, something he did regularly when he was in Major League Baseball at various ballparks.
"I was able to meet a lot of people of all ages who had any types of disabilities or anything,” he said. “I just know the kind of impact it can have. If I can do that and do a tiny bit of what Jim gave me, I’d like to pay it forward as much as possible.”
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTO courtesy of Chad Bentz.